NOT the Lorca Damon page for YA readers! Run away, children, run away!

When I was a teacher in the prison, a lot of my instructional time was spent making my students aware of common myths that are not actually true. For example, no, it is not legal (or usually physically possible) to drive sideways in Japan, despite what Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift made you believe. No, your blood is not blue until it hits the oxygen, despite what your fourth grade teacher told you…and your fifth and seventh grade teachers if you attended school in Alabama. No, Jamaica is not one big giant weed-patch, and no, it is not legal for foreigners to just head on down there and toke up; turns out there’s actually this really cool extortion plot where the police will drop a few seeds in your stash, since having seeds amounts to ‘intent to grow and distribute’ and is actually an executable offense if your parents can’t pay the ‘fine.’

So, after years of crushing inmates’ traffic hopes and ganja dreams, it’s time for my own comeuppance. I am a firm believer in the existence of a wonderful holiday celebrated every year for centuries, nay since the very written word was created. I know very little about this holiday except what a passing Facebook meme told me, and the meme was so honest and delightful that I dared not actually look it up for fear it might not be true.

Happy Jolabokaflod! I’ve written before about the magic of the holiday season, about the many Jolabokaflod carols and recipes and decorations, but in case you missed it, here’s the Clif Notes version: on December 24th, Imma hand you a book. You unwrap it, and no matter if you’ve read it before or hate that author or already have something you wanted to read, you get your ass in the bed with a cup of chocolate (it might just be hot chocolate, again, too scared to Google it in case this isn’t real) and you read that book.

Here’s where I fucking dare anyone to say, “I’ve been to Iceland, in fact, I was there for Christmas visiting my very Icelandic family, and we don’t do this. There was talk that it used to be a thing, but that was back before the Vikings came and burned our library huts. It’s pretty much made up and gets spread on Facebook every year for some strange reason.”

This is a holiday I was made for. Yes, I still love all the other holidays, but just like how everybody gets to be “one-thirty-eighth Irish” on St. Patrick’s Day and all the white people stampede the Mexican restaurants on Cinco de Mayo, I declare us all to be Icelandic on December 24th, just so all of you can buy me a book. You’re welcome.

If you have some downtime before the New Year and want to throw yourself a Jolabokaflod party, it’s not actually too late. It seems like you only need a book, some chocolate, and somewhere to sit your ass down. I can’t recommend The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore enough, or Hugh Howey’s Beacon 23 if you hate happiness and smiling. Go nuts with it.

Like this:

Trump is an asshole, and his supporters are (insert any expletive of your choice right here). That being said, there are literally families being torn apart over the election and its potentially life-altering, apocalyptic consequences. With Thanksgiving coming in just a matter of hours, I thought I’d bring you a fairly comprehensive list of topics to discuss with assholes you have to share a table (and the bathroom) with.

Whenever the topic shifts to the unpleasant, I advise you to pull a Mrs. Forbidger. She was the lovely elderly woman who supervised my internship, and she had this amazing habit. Whenever anyone entered the room with nasty workplace gossip, she would shut it down by looking down at her outfit and finding some article of clothing to comment on. Then she would smile brightly and say, “Do you think this blouse matches my skirt?”

The speaker would blink and stammer for a second, obviously thrown off by the sudden turn the conversation was taking. They would halfheartedly agree and then launch back into their angry tirade, only to have dear Mrs. Forbidger say, “I wasn’t sure I had anything to match it in my closet, but it was on sale for just eight dollars! I couldn’t pass that up!”

Typically, all parties in the room–including me–would look at the poor woman as if she was teetering on the edge of Alzheimer’s, until the day she caught my eye during an exchange of this kind and winked. That crafty woman. So here is your own prepared list of Mrs. Forbidger-style topics; seriously, if things get ugly, just literally blurt out one of these things and shift the conversation towards squid penises and your poop biome.

Below is a list of “safe topics” that can be blurted out right in the middle of someone’s rant. Proceed with caution, though, as the potential for it to only fan the flames is mentioned in parentheses. Those with an asterisk are especially useful for families that don’t serve alcohol at these functions.

Did you know you can make frisbees out of cornstarch, water, oil, and a microwave? * (DANGER! The old “kids today are spoiled, they’d never play with a frisbee unless it was made out of an iPhone” rant.)

Speaking of history, George Washington wore a size thirteen shoe. (WARNING! Could lead to a screaming match about Pence getting booed at Hamilton!)

The rearview mirror was invented for Indy Car racing so they could shed the extra weight of carrying a guy to face backwards and tell them when to change lanes. * (BEWARE! This could trigger someone who’s lost his job to a Mexican (not really) to scream about downsizing!)

The sun’s core temperature is 73 million degrees (CAUTION! This topic could lead to an argument on clean energy and climate change! Tread carefully and guard the sharp objects!)

Paper towels were invented by mistake when some rolls of toilet paper came off the line too thick and wavy to be used. * (WATCH OUT! Your crazy aunt is going to complain about your uncle never changing the toilet paper roll!)

McDonald’s actually sends its managers to Hamburger U in one of eleven different locations. (DANGER! Potential Trump U tie-in which could lead to a knocked over glass!)

Having one blue eye and one brown eye actually isn’t all that uncommon. It happens in about one out of every 500 people. (DANGER! For some reason, this will make someone think of Muslims, even though I don’t know why!)

Forget reading tea leaves…I’ve been seeing a scatomancy expert, and his ability to tell my future just by looking at my poop is uncanny. (WARNING! Potential precursor to a spewing diatribe on why we need to eliminate Eastern religions!)

People who live in the Andes Mountains have two to three more quarts of blood in them than the rest of the people in the world. (DANGER! Be prepared for a response pertaining to “and this is why we need to hurry up and build that wall…to keep those extra-bloody Hispanics out” even though the idiot brother who said this doesn’t know that people in the Andes aren’t Mexicans!)

A newborn baby’s brain grows at a rate of 1.5mg per minute (DANGER! Possible lead towards a plate-throwing tirade about women’s reproductive rights!)

Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon with his left foot first. * (BEWARE! Could lead to loud proclamations on NASA wasting money looking for water on Mars!)

The Natives Americans offered the Pilgrims lobster from the bay, but the Pilgrims wouldn’t eat them because they thought they were bugs. * (DANGER! Potential spark of gas-fueled fire towards a discussion on the Dakota pipeline!)

Did you know Hitler was– (ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! Do not mention the name Hitler around that bunch of Nazis! Holy crap, it’s like you’ve never even met these people! They’re CRAZY!)

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The original title of this post was “Oh, You’re Pro-Life? Here’s A Primer on Why You’re a Douche.” I decided after much soul-searching and two bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill to change it.

Since late-term abortion is a hotly contested issue in this election, one that is currently dividing the nation like nothing but racism, pussy grabbing, and Trump U can, a few women have come forward to publish the heart-wrenching stories of their own late-term abortions. Their intentions were to clear up the misconception that the JackassOP is sharing, this notion that women can change their minds a week before their due dates and demand that their doctors rip the fetus limb from limb and suction the pieces out into oblivion.

These women shared very legitimate reasons for late-term abortions, namely, that something had gone horribly wrong and they had to terminate their pregnancies to save their own lives. They eloquently made the very valid point that no one is having a late-term abortion the week before her due date simply because she’d changed her mind about the whole thing.

Except I’m here to tell you that I did. Literally. Like, an actual week before my due date. Here’s how it went down.

I was happily married and already the mother of a wonderful, precious baby girl. My husband and I decided to go for two, and we ended up pregnant again. This is where I need to stop and make sure the rabid pro-lifers in the audience are keeping up, since I don’t want to go too fast or use any big words that they can’t understand.

Moving on. I’m pregnant, it’s a week before my due date, and I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve literally changed my mind. It’s not that I didn’t want another baby, but I just couldn’t stand being pregnant anymore. My clothes didn’t fit, I couldn’t reach the gas pedal when I drove because I had to scoot my seat way back, it was all just a giant fiasco. Plus, Thanksgiving was coming up and I just didn’t want to hear my in-laws’ asinine jokes about checking my timer to see if I’d popped yet.

I went to my doctor on a Monday and begged her to end it. She checked me over, smiled sweetly, and told me to fuck off. (Not really, but pretty much.) The “thing” I was carrying inside me was officially her patient as well, and the bitch wouldn’t do anything to upset that little parasite.

So I cried all the way home–while leaning the seat way back to reach the gas pedal–and got online. I Googled all the different ways I could just make this happen on my own. And let me tell you, they were pretty gross. The only one that didn’t sound painful or like it would cause permanent injury was to walk a lot, so that’s what I did. I went to the mall, purposely left my wallet in the car so I wouldn’t buy anything, and walked for hours.

By Wednesday, it kinda worked. I felt this terrible ripping pain across my abdomen, a sure sign that I’d managed to abort my own baby in the food court. I immediately called my doctor, who told me to meet her at the hospital. Once I got there, they hooked me up to all kinds of machines (none of which, I later found out, make you have an abortion…the shit heads…) and discovered I was having contractions. It worked! Those home abortions tips really worked!

Then it stopped. Nothing. Nada. Not even a flutter of escape. But fortunately, my doctor must be some kind of immoral baby-killing guru because she looked at the printout and measured me, then declared me ready to have this baby. She told me to get a good night’s sleep–yeah, like that’s gonna happen…lack of sleep is the whole reason I’d changed my mind on being pregnant in the first place!–and said to come back first thing in the morning and I could have my abortion. She mentioned that I’d be there for at least 48 hours afterwards, and that I had to pack a few things for the fetus to wear home. She also mentioned something about needing a DOT-approved car seat for the fetus to ride in, but I wasn’t really paying attention due to the euphoria of successfully changing my mind.

The next day, sure enough, they hooked me up to some stuff, gave me an IV and an epidural (fuck you, all you haters who think I should have had to writhe in pain for being such a godless, leg-spreading whore who got herself pregnant and then didn’t want to have it), and thirteen hours later, the procedure was done.

It was really weird, though: there were no steel hooks driven into the back of the baby’s skull, no vacuuming machines, no limbs being ripped apart. It was actually a whole lot like the first time I gave birth.

AND THAT’S BECAUSE IT WAS EXACTLY LIKE THE FIRST TIME I GAVE BIRTH, YOU HATE-MONGERING TWAT-WAFFLES! DO YOU SERIOUSLY BELIEVE THAT WOMEN ARE “CHANGING THEIR MINDS” THE WEEK BEFORE THE DUE DATE, SO THE DOCTOR KILLS THE BABY?! NO, YOU NASTY CRAPAHOLIC! THE DOCTOR DELIVERS THE FUCKING BABY BECAUSE IT’S A LIVING BABY! WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU RIP IT APART WHEN IT’S A SEVEN-POUND-SEVEN-OUNCE HUMAN FUCKING BEING?!

Whoa, sorry. I don’t know what happened. I haven’t been that ragey and hormonal since the last time I was pregnant and ended it all a week before my due date. I’m kidding.

Now, in all seriousness, this mostly-true story (true about the not wanting to be pregnant part, not true about getting rid of my kid; she’s amazing and turns fourteen this month) is meant to illustrate the sadness I feel for pro-life douchebags who’ve been lied to by someone with an agenda and then don’t have the intelligence to discern fact from fiction. There are horrible, life-destroying reasons why a mother has to terminate a pregnancy near the end, and none of them are ever because the woman simply changed her mind. But small-minded assholes believe the bigger assholes who told them this, and they struggle every day under the weight of their own stupidity.

Please, people, be sensible. Think it through. Listen to the medical facts, not the political rhetoric. And if you wanna have your own abortion–at any point along the way–get some advice that doesn’t come with a dose of Bible verses and some slut-shaming. You’re welcome.

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So I’ve had some people email me to see if I’m all right, mostly since I haven’t posted since July and most of my posts are the result of doing something physically painful to myself. Feelin’ the love, y’all.

No, I’ve been on an intentional hiatus. I’ve got a crap ton of work to do and I have two kids involved in fall sports/activities, and… okay, wait. That’s a lie. I mean, it’s not a lie that my kids are keeping my busy, but it’s not the reason I haven’t been posting.

I can’t do the politics right now. I just can’t. If I ever let myself sit down and post about the state of politics right now, Congress will repeal the First Amendment just to shut me up. There will be censorship boards again, and I will FAIL.

So I’m coming back after this shit’s over–assuming the world wasn’t set on fire during the night of November 8th–and will get back to posting ridiculous crap. In the meantime, I leave you with this important message:

Voting is an important right, and it’s a massively important part of the whole American process (even when it doesn’t feel like it). And right about now you’re thinking that I’m gonna remain neutral and just encourage you all to go out and be a part of democracy next month. You’re so fucking wrong.

Voting just for the sake of voting is for fuckheads. Vote for Hillary. I swear to all that’s holy, vote for Hillary. Fuck Trump and his hatred-inducing regurgitated diarrhea. Fuck the notion of “protesting” by voting for one of the two douches pretending they still have a dog in this fight, you’re only going to divide the vote and give the Trumpkin the victory. Fuck writing in your dog’s name, even though it’s sounding better and better by the minute. Fuck sitting at home on your ass and avoiding the whole mess because standing in line is inconvenient.

Don’t be an asshole just because you’re allowed to by law. Save us all, do us all a favor, and oh yeah, I delete any comments on my blogs that piss me off because First Amendment only applies to the Constitution, not the blog that I pay good money to maintain.

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If you know me, or you’ve just spent any amount of time accidentally clicking on my blog posts when they come through your Facebook feed because you’ve been meaning to unfriend me but you keep forgetting, then you already know that I have super powers. And by super powers I actually mean the ability to do something stupid and probably painful, and then serve as a cautionary tale to others.

Case in point: I once stepped on a toothpick as a kid and got it jammed up in my foot, and it had to be surgically removed. From thenceforth, my parents had a “no going barefoot in the house rule” for about six months. Personally, I would have gone with a “if you drop a fucking toothpick, don’t be a douchebag and just leave it there” rule, but hey, their house, their rules.

Case in point number 2: the state in which I live has a really great policy about getting a boating license. If you take a state police-approved boater safety class, you don’t have to study for the exam. I showed up at the license office with my certificate from the New Jersey State Police, indicating that I had taken the class and met all the requirements to be a trustworthy seaman (heh heh…seaman). The woman took my certificate, looked it over carefully, and shrieked,”This certificate is over twenty years old!” I told her that yes, since New Jersey is a peninsula, all sixth graders have to take the boater safety class. I also showed her in the little license booklet where it says you can skip the test and just go straight to being a seaman (heh heh) if you pass a course.

NOW, however, they have a rule on how old your certificate can be. I don’t care…I got my license, so suck it, non-seaman bitches.

So my super power seems to be serving as a reason new rules or new concepts get created. Sometimes it’s painful, sometimes it results in being grandfathered in.

But this week, the lovely people at the Be the Match National Bone Marrow Registry office contacted me and asked if I could be an example to others again. They were quick to point out that this time it wouldn’t require 48-hours of being jabbed with giant metal straws in my limbs, sucking my super venom out into a plastic baggie.

Since there would be no needles this time, I said, “Sure.”

And there you have it. I now need all of you to follow through with what looks a lot like a drug test, but really is just you spitting on a Q-tip and mailing it to some hapless intern whose job it is to open all the envelopes of spit. The registry is low on folks, and if you’ll click the link below and agree to spit on a Q-tip, then apparently I’ll be in the running for a prize. They were also quick to point out that it’s not actually a prize, but that they’ll put my name in the thank you email if I get more people to do this than the other superheroes heading this up.

So click the link, fill it out, spit on their Q-tip, and save somebody with cancer. And did you know that bone marrow actually treats other kinds of stuff? And that if you donate it, they’ll even fly you to the donation center and treat you like freakin’ royalty while they stab you over and over? It was pretty cool. And then you get to take a picture of your bone marrow, which is now going to be the photo on my boating license.

Like this:

I know, I know, I’m a little late to the “let’s all hate this woman and her infectious laugh” party, but it’s taken me this long to really care about the issue. And now I do. Thanks to the asshole who made it all about me.

Back up: this lady posts a Facebook Live thing for her own friends and family to enjoy. Her little slice of discounted retail item heaven is so uplifting and happy place-inducing that it goes viral. First, she gets a visit from a major retailer who thanks her for all the free exposure of their store with a few more Star Wars-themed goodies. Yay. Then she gets a few TV appearances…more yay. Then somehow, that translates into scholarships for her children…what the what?

Of course, it took about twelve parsecs (that’s a Star Wars references for those of you who simply aren’t cool enough to know) for the internet to start hating this woman. There were the initial and totally expected fat-shaming comments every time someone shared it, the typical “this is white privilege at its finest” arguments, even hate from the cosplay crowd who wasn’t convinced this woman loved Star Wars enough to have earned the right to don a cheap plastic Chewbacca mask and enjoy it.

But then shit got real. She started charging for autographs? I mean, WHAT? She paid for a booth at a celebrity event, and people had to actually fork over a few bucks to get to meet her and get her autograph? OMG! Somebody stop her!

People, don’t be assholes. This woman saw her fifteen minutes of fame flash right in front of her face, and she had the brains to grab onto that shit like a drowning man going down for the third time. The whole point of her happy little video was that she’d saved up enough Kohl’s bucks to buy herself something fun, something that she even points out in the video she’ll get to play with for about four minutes before her kids get their greedy little hands on it. I don’t care what kind of viral content I put up, if it somehow translates into a free Ivy League education for one of my kids, forget the chump change of paying for my autograph, I’d make you pay to breathe the oxygen around me.

So how did this come around to me? I got tired of the stupid-ass hater comments on my blogs. I seriously had someone comment recently, calling me an asshole for a blog post I wrote in FUCKING FEBRUARY OF 2015! Honey chile, I been an asshole way more times than that one blog post just since last week, let alone since a year ago winter!

But the internet has given us free rein to be shitty to each other. See a post, gotta say something. And there’s a 93% chance it’ll be something ignorant and ugly. Chewbacca Mom didn’t ruin the internet, but the way people have treated her sure is everything that’s wrong with it. So stop being assholes in the comments…just laugh along with the happy little Star Wars woman, and if you don’t like it… move along, these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

Like this:

The best part of owning a blog that people actually read is the product reviews, and by that I really mean the opportunity to have awesome free stuff arrive in the mail for me to try out. To date, I’ve received free electronic thermometers that look like vibrators, free smartwatches that were disappointingly NOT made by Apple, free African-American skin care products (which I dutifully shared with my best gay black male friend), free camping gear (because apparently I strike them as someone who’s going to be homeless any day now), free food (no wait, kale isn’t actually a food any more than water boarding is a personal hygiene method), free clothes/shoes/thong panties/togas, and more.

But nothing… NOTHING… will ever top the free contraceptive I received last month.

First of all, an important public service announcement: Dad, it is vital that you stop reading now. I’m about to describe having to take one for the team and have sex for a third time (since the first two times resulted in the birth of your grandkids, within wedlock, I feel like I should add), and I’m not sure your blood pressure medications are rated for this kind of blog post. Besides, you know you only read my blog so you can correct my shitty grammar, so we’ll both be better off if you skip this one. You were warned.

Yes, the Galactic Cap arrived at my house in packaging that made it frighteningly clear that it neither protects against STDs nor keeps you from getting pregnant. It’s important to note that at least one of those is actually the life goal for the product, but that they can’t state it to be factual until they reach the FDA-approval stage. Lucky me, I’m not likely to catch any germies from my chosen choice of partner, and pregnancy isn’t something that anyone wants but wouldn’t be the end of the world if it happened. That made us the ideal couple to review this new product.

I strongly urge you to click this link and watch the Galactic Cap video for yourself. I know it’s a great video because we had to watch it several times to figure out how to use it. Two of those times, we were actually naked and in the bedroom, holding the open package and pointing the thing at someone’s nether regions (his, not mine).

So what makes the Galactic Cap so innovative?

IT’S FUCKING ADHESIVE! IT STICKS TO YOUR DICK AND PEELS OFF WHEN YOU’RE DONE! THAT’S WHAT!

Yes, this brand-new take on the millenia-old condom design no longer requires putting on the proverbial raincoat. Instead, you peel off the paper backing and stick this thing directly to your penis (if you have one…if you don’t have one, you stand there calling out the directions). The…ahem, matter…is directed straight into a reservoir between the two layers of film, meaning there’s only a barrier touching part of your schlong instead of the whole thing. It’s all quite amazing, if you can get past the fact that you’re about to wax your penis when you’re finished.

We did the deed in the name of science (I told you to go away, Dad), and my husband had a pleasantly amused smile on his face until he asked me how to remove it. The directions were oddly lacking, since basic common sense was supposed to come into play.

“You just…peel it,” I said, gesturing in the general vicinity.

“What?”

“Peel it off.”

“What?”

“You have to remove it…probably before everything returns to its standard size and shape.”

“What?”

“NOW! Peel it off!”

Yes, my husband had experienced hysterical deafness, just like when you go blind from seeing something upsetting. He could no longer hear anything but the sound of his own screaming once he began the removal process. I took some video of it, just for fun. I also showed it to a friend of mine who didn’t believe that all of this was really real.

Now, I’m going to give you a few moments to let your eyesight return to normal. While you count the floaters exploding inside your eyeballs, let me tell you that I missed one really crucial term when I agreed to test and review this product:

PROTOTYPE.

Yes, it’s a prototype. It’s actually the second generation model, or DickStickUm2.0, as I like to call it. So, basically, this product isn’t really a product yet, and I’m not actually supposed to be reviewing it. I’m supposed to be providing critical feedback on this bandaid that we just purposely stuck to my overeager husband’s junk with weapons-grade adhesive.

The followup survey was very interesting, to say the least. That’s where I learned a vital piece of information that I’ve decided never to share with my husband: 46% of the users reported that the adhesive was too strong and caused pain during removal.

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS WRONG WITH THE OTHER 54% OF YOU PEOPLE? YOU ENJOY HAVING LATEX FUSED TO THE HEADS OF YOUR RESPECTIVE PENII??

It took me some time to figure out how to write this review, especially after talking to the very lovely inventor. The last thing I wanted to do was to besmirch the Galatic Cap’s good name, since at this point that’s really all it has going for it. He and I discussed the possibility of including a moist towelette filled with baby oil to aid in removal, or at the very least a coupon for some WD-40. Medical interventions are currently being considered.

So why would I write a product review that warns people AWAY from the Galactic Cap? Because at this stage in the game, more human trials are needed in order to a) prove that human beings tried it and b) make sure no one else gets hurt by an early prototype. I’m proud to say that not only am I not pregnant after using it, but I won’t be pregnant for a long time to come thanks to my husband’s unwillingness to get naked around me. (I’ve already signed us up for the 3.0 model.) So keep watching the Galactic Cap’s really awesome website and Twitter account, and sign up to give it the old college try in the name of science.